BEHAVIOR OF COMPOSITE FERROCEMENT REINFORCED CONCRETE BEAMS

The Ferrocement is a type of thin reinforcement concrete made of cement- sand mortar mixture with closely spaced of relatively small diameter wire meshes with or without bars of small diameter called skeletal bar. The purpose of the current study is to identify the behavior of the composite fibrocement and reinforced concrete beams. The main variables of the current study are the number of layers of wire mesh, the casting time for the second layer ( Normal concrete) , and the effect of the presence or absence of the skeletal bars. The current study included the casting of two reference beams with a different reinforcing ratio (2φ8 mm), and (3φ8 mm). The study also included the casting of eight composite beams of fibrocement and reinforced concrete. The results show that the use of fibrocement layer, with (4,6,8) layers of wire meshes, skeletal bar, and the first casting period (1.5 hr) leads to increase the ultimate load by (17.142%, 21.42%,and 22.85%) also the cracking load increased by (31.57%, 47.36%,and 68.42%). The results show that the use of fibrocement layer, with (4,6,8) layers of wire meshes, skeletal bar , and the second casting period ( 24 hr) leads to increase the ultimate load by (32.85%, 40%,and 42.85%) also the cracking load increased by (36.84%, 84.21%,and 89.47%).When using the fibrocement layer containing on the skeletal bar the maximum load increased (6.96%, 17.64%) for the first and second casting, respectively, also for cracking load, it increased by (6.67%,16.12%) respectively, this is due to that the skeletal bar leads to increase reinforcement area and increase restriction in compared with ferrocement layer without the skeletal bar. © 2019 JASET, International Scholars and Researchers Association